ABSTRACT
Black box epidemiology combined with the latest powerful computer tools, which can be used to search for risk factors of all possible and imaginable kinds in databases to risk factor inflation. However, epidemiology is not just a scientific discipline which has emerged as a legitimate mode of production of scientific knowledge about drugs and their uses. Although black box epidemiology has proved its worth as a means of fighting diseases with clearly identifiable biological causes, it has also been known to fail. Epidemiology is contributing actively to the process of drug use medicalization. This medical terminology continued to be used in epidemiological research projects on illicit drug use. A study by Miles and colleagues (2001) on the risk behavior of a sample of adolescent twins provides a particularly good example of black box epidemiology conducted by non-epidemiologists. As far as the use of cannabis was concerned, genetic factors accounts about 31 percent and the extra-familial environment for 22 percent.
